FROM: The San Francisco Chronicle
DECEMBER 15, 2004, WEDNESDAY, FINAL EDITION
SECTION: BAY AREA; Pg. B1
HEADLINE: CALIFORNIA;
Stem cell board selected;
Front-runner Klein will head enterprise
BYLINE: Carl T. Hall
California's top elected officeholders have settled on a single choice --
Palo
Alto real estate developer Robert N. Klein -- to direct California's new
stem
cell enterprise, but nominated three candidates to serve as his top
deputy.
State Treasurer Phil Angelides completed the complex nomination
process
Tuesday for the board charged with running the California Institute for
Regenerative Medicine, which voters created Nov. 2 by passing Proposition
71.
The measure authorized $3 billion in grants for research and
facilities to
conduct research, specifically embryonic stem cell work ineligible for
federal
grants.
The 29-member stem cell policy board, known as the Independent
Citizens
Oversight Committee, meets for the first time on Friday to choose its
chair and
vice chair, among other items on a crowded agenda.
The state's four top elected officeholders had the task of nominating
candidates for the two top board jobs, as well as naming most of the
other 27
board members, including specific types of patient advocates, research
centers,
life-science companies and universities.
Angelides was the last to reveal his appointments, announcing Tuesday
that
he wanted Klein, mastermind of the stem cell initiative and leader of the
Prop.
71 election campaign, to serve in the top job.
Long considered the front-runner, Klein, 59, had already been
nominated by
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante and Controller Steve
Westly.
Angelides nominated Joan Samuelson of Healdsburg to be vice chair.
Samuelson
is president and founder of the Parkinson's Action Network, a nonprofit
group.
Westly had chosen Samuelson to fill a position on the board allotted
to a
Parkinson's patient advocate. If the other board members vote for her as
vice
chair, Westly would have 30 days to fill the Parkinson's slot.
Schwarzenegger and Westly nominated Chiron Corp. co-founder Ed
Penhoet to be
second-in-command under Klein, while Bustamante tapped Dr. Frank E.
Staggers
Sr., a Castro Valley urologist, for the position.
Officials said Klein was clearly the best choice for the top job.
Bustamante, for instance, cited Klein's "tireless commitment to advancing
medical research" and long track record in business and housing finance.
Jeff Sheehy, a San Francisco HIV/AIDS patient advocate who has been
named to
the stem cell board, also endorsed Klein on Tuesday, despite insisting
previously that more than one person should be nominated and raising a
number of
questions about how the stem cell enterprise is being set up.
Sheehy said he is still pushing for a more open process to guide the
committee's activities, noting that a number of items on the board's
Friday
agenda will be difficult to decide carefully in the time allotted. But
now that
all four officeholders have nominated Klein, Sheehy said there's little
point in
pushing any further for a competitive selection.
"I'm disappointed, but I am not unhappy that Bob will be the chair,"
Sheehy
said. "He has shown enormous leadership and has a compelling vision for
the
institute."
Sheehy said Klein deserves some credit for the "spectacular
achievement" of
convincing both the Republican governor and three top elected Democrats
to back
him.
During a telephone interview, Samuelson said Klein's business acumen
and
legal training should serve the stem cell enterprise well, despite his
lack of
scientific credentials.
"There is going to be an amazing amount of medical expertise on this
board,"
she said, suggesting Klein and the patient advocates on the board will
contribute a sense of urgency to the effort.
Critics of Prop. 71 had a different view.
Marcy Darnovsky, associate director of the Center for Genetics and
Society
in Oakland, said that Klein, as "the author of a seriously flawed measure
and
the key person engineering its passage," should have been disqualified.
She said voters assumed that the officials charged with nominating
the key
leaders "would undertake a thoughtful and careful search for this
enormously
powerful position."
"It's clear they didn't get that," she said.
Klein, through a spokeswoman, has declined interview requests this
week
until after the committee members have had a chance to decide on his
nomination,
even if he is the only one in the running.
Angelides also named to the board Dr. David Baltimore, president of
the
California Institute of Technology; Dr. Michael Friedman, chief executive
officer of the City of Hope research and treatment center in Southern
California; Michael Goldberg of Woodside, a board member of Genomic
Health, a
Redwood City company involved in cancer treatment; and Dr. Francisco
Prieto, a
physician in Elk Grove who is president of the Sacramento-Sierra Chapter
of the
American Diabetes Association.
---------------------------------------------
Appointees to the Independent Citizens Oversight Committee.
Representing patient advocates: Dr. Oswald Steward, chair and
director of
the Reeve-Irvine Research Center for Spinal Cord Injury at UC Irvine; Dr.
Leon
Thal, chairman of the department of neurosciences at UC San Diego,
director of
Alzheimer's Disease Research Center at UC San Diego; Sherry Lansing,
chairman,
Paramount Pictures Motion Picture Group; Joan Samuelson, founder and
president,
Parkinson's Action Network; Dr. Phyllis Preciado, executive director,
Diabetes
Resource Network; David Serrano Sewell, San Francisco deputy city
attorney; Dr.
Janet Wright, practicing cardiologist; Dr. Francisco Prieto, president,
Sacramento-Sierra Chapter of the American Diabetes Association; Jeff
Sheehy,
deputy director for communications, UCSF Aids Research Institute;
Jonathan
Shestack, founder, Cure Autism Now, and producer, Warner Bros. Studios
UC medical school representatives: Clair Pomeroy, dean, UC Davis
School of
Medicine, vice chancellor, UC Davis Human Health Services; Gerald S.
Levey,
dean, UCLA Geffen School of Medicine, vice chancellor, UCLA Medical
Sciences;
Susan V. Bryant, dean, UC Irvine School of Biological Sciences, Cicerone
professor of development/cell biology; Edward W. Holmes, dean, UC San
Diego
School of Medicine, vice chancellor, UC San Diego Health Services; David
Kessler, vice chancellor, UCSF Medical Affairs
Life-science company representatives: Gayle Wilson, member, board of
directors for Gilead Sciences Inc. and member, board of trustees for
California
Institute of Technology; Dr. Ted Love, president and CEO, Nuvelo Inc.;
Tina
Nova, president and CEO, Genoptix Inc.; Michael Goldberg, member, board
of
directors, Genomic Health, and trustee, National Childhood Cancer
Foundation
Other universities and research institutions: Dr. Keith Black,
director,
Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute, and director of neurosurgery at
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center; Dr. Brian Henderson, dean, Keck School of
Medicine
at University of Southern California; Phillip Pizzo, dean, Stanford
Medical
School; John C. Reed, president, Burnham Institute; Richard Murphy,
president,
Salk Institute; Robert Birgeneau, chancellor, UC Berkeley; Dr. David
Baltimore,
president, California Institute of Technology; Michael Friedman,
president and
CEO, City of HopeE-mail Carl T. Hall at [log in to unmask]
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